


lightning turns sawdust gold

by worry



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen, Healing, turlough?? being HAPPY? in MY fics?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 09:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14974232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worry/pseuds/worry
Summary: He’s still here, despite every attempt to rid himself of the tight, binding strings of living. That has to have some hidden meaning, some secret trap door that will make him heal. He just falls through -- and then he’s safe, in the TARDIS, with the Doctor, with Tegan. With time and space wholly resting in his hands. He doesn’t have to dream, doesn’t have to fight and scratch himself up beyond humanity’s eye. He’s safe. He is safe, and he feels safe, and he’s ascending from the charred ashes of panic and rising through the air into security. It doesn’t feel like melting; it feels like air. He can breathe. He can breathe. He is the star, newly born. This is rebirth under the calm waters of living; he can stop drowning now.





	lightning turns sawdust gold

**Author's Note:**

> wow! it's midnight and i'm writing happy turlough, this has literally never happened before in my life

The Doctor takes him to see the birth of a star. 

 

Turlough has never used the word  _ beautiful,  _ in its entire sincerity; no events in Turlough’s life can be labelled  _ beautiful,  _ no hardened aspect of him can be considered  _ beautiful,  _ but internally, with the fuel of his body, he can imagine himself as this nebula, this molecular cloud moving swiftly through his vision. The nebula is intensely cool, on the edge of absolute zero; this is Turlough’s dorsum, clouded and scattered and frozen-over, too cold to endure. He is this movement, the pressure under which this molecular cloud collapses. His body is his body. His body playing the part of the temperature, the stage lost in a haze of what it means to be  _ truly beautiful;  _ Turlough is stuck in this act, a true-story type retelling of the universe’s primal nature.

 

His lower legs dangle from the floor, right into the vastness of space; they’re sitting side by side, halfway through the TARDIS doors. He can feel it again - the Guardian’s words searing through his mind, the Guardian’s hands wrapped tight around his throat, pressing the cold into Turlough’s force of life. The loss of balance when he jumped from the ship and floated throughout the in-between spaces of existence, but he was not even allowed to die on his own terms, in his own way. He wasn’t even respected in death.

 

But here---

 

The Doctor’s arm brushes against his, pulling Turlough out of the past’s grave. This is the present, this is what he was built for; perhaps he was supposed to live. He doesn’t think of fate much; fate’s existence means that he was divinely intended to suffer and wound. His time isn’t over yet. Time will still flutter through without him - but he’s still beating. He’s still  _ here,  _ despite every attempt to rid himself of the tight, binding strings of living. That has to have some hidden meaning, some secret trap door that will make him heal. He just falls through -

 

\- and then he’s safe, in the TARDIS, with the Doctor, with Tegan. With time and space wholly resting in his hands. He doesn’t have to dream, doesn’t have to fight and scratch himself up beyond humanity’s eye. He’s safe. He is safe, and he  _ feels  _ safe, and he’s ascending from the charred ashes of panic and rising through the air into security. It doesn’t feel like melting; it feels like air. He can breathe. He can breathe. He is the star, newly born. This is rebirth under the calm waters of living; he can stop drowning now. 

 

“Have you ever seen anything like this, Turlough?” the Doctor asks; sincerity has, up until this point, always been threatening - _ no one is sincere, everyone wants their own taste of blood -  _  but the Doctor’s voice is sincere, his face serene with eternity. He is genuine in his words, authentic in existence - and Turlough doesn’t want to claw at it. He lowers his walls; an inevitable danger, but Turlough has seen everything - he can trudge through the next betrayal, he can breathe through the next crushing weight. 

 

He watches the space around them light up and Turlough’s normal perception moves into something greater, something  _ whole -  _ as the star forms in front of them. He has grasped his dream tightly - he is  _ free. _

 

“No,” Turlough responds, sincere. “I haven’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> "If you count to ten  
> I'll show you how to shake the pain like it's cinnamon  
> Draw a line in sand  
> Watch me put a banner in it, like silver and lightning  
> Take a deep breath before you do something drastic  
> Knocking off heads with your military tactics"   
> \--Lightning Turns Sawdust Gold, Sleigh Bells


End file.
